Dinosaur-themed attraction coming to Lake George

A view of the Magic Forest amusement park on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, in Lake George, N.Y. An event was held at the park on Tuesday to announce a new owner of the park and to talk about a new attraction coming to the park called Dino Roar Valley. (Paul Buckowski/Times Union) less

A view of the Magic Forest amusement park on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, in Lake George, N.Y. An event was held at the park on Tuesday to announce a new owner of the park and to talk about a new attraction coming to ... more

A view of the Magic Forest amusement park on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, in Lake George, N.Y. An event was held at the park on Tuesday to announce a new owner of the park and to talk about a new attraction coming to the park called Dino Roar Valley. (Paul Buckowski/Times Union) less

A view of the Magic Forest amusement park on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018, in Lake George, N.Y. An event was held at the park on Tuesday to announce a new owner of the park and to talk about a new attraction coming to ... more

A dinosaur-themed attraction will be part of the rebirth of the former Magic Forest amusement park.

Dino Roar Valley will be part of what the new owners of the Route 9 facility plan to call Lake George Expedition Park.

Ruben Ellsworth of Lake George, the owner of Ellsworth & Son Excavating, is buying the amusement park from Jack Gillette, whose family has owned the park since its opening in the 1960s, though a sale price has not been disclosed.

The Dino Roar Valley addition will be a part of the park's existing 46 acres as a "walk-through attraction" featuring animatronic dinosaurs, according to John Collins, the general manager and chief operating officer of Lake George Expedition Park.

Magic Forest's rides and layout will remain largely the same, Collins said, except for the removal of some of the amusement park's iconic statues, which have been put up for sale.

Collins spoke at a press conference outside the park on Tuesday to announce the plans, but additional details were scarce.

Information about ticket prices will come in 2019, Collins said.

The park is set to open Memorial Day weekend, though Collins said an exact opening date would be announced at another time.

Seasonally, the park is expected to be open daily from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and on weekends until Columbus Day, Collins said.

Collins, a former general manager of the Six Flags Great Escape amusement park in Queensbury, said his goal is to update the park while maintaining the nostalgia that's made Magic Forest a staple of the region for decades.

"You need to make sure you try and keep it as the way (customers) remember it," Collins said. "You always want to make sure you maintain what (Gillette) and his family have done, at the same time bringing it up and modernizing where you can."

Despite the nearby Six Flags Great Escape park, as well as the Santa's Workshop amusement park 80 miles north in the Essex County community of Wilmington, Collins was confident there's enough business to go around for the region.

"Additional attractions can only help the area because they have more things to come and see and do when they're here, hopefully extend the length of stays," Collins said. "There's definitely enough business, and hopefully we create more business."

Magic Forest has traditionally skewed towards younger children aged around 3 to 10 by featuring things like a petting zoo, fantastical statues and, for a time, a diving horse show.

But Collins said he expects the age range to move upward a bit with the introduction of the dinosaur attraction.

Many of the park's massive statues, some of which could be seen from Route 9, are still for sale.

The park's iconic 38-foot tall Uncle Sam statue, billed as the tallest in the world, will be sold, while details for a new sign replacing the muffler man have to be "ironed out," Collins said.

Gillette, the longtime owner of the park, said he thought it was unlikely Magic Forest would remain an amusement park when he first decided to sell. But he was happy when Ellsworth approached him this past spring about buying the property and keeping it an attraction for local tourists.

"I didn't want to see it get developed into something else," Ellsworth, the lifelong Lake George resident, said. "I've been here many times as a child."